


melt

by librations



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 03:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16824439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/librations/pseuds/librations
Summary: Derek laughs under his breath. He reaches out with both hands, takes Stiles by the shoulders, and turns him around to face the menu posted on the side of the building so he won’t be left scrambling to make a decision once they finally make it up to the window to order. He drags his thumbs from the base of Stiles’ skull, all the way down his neck to the middle of his shoulders, and then lifts his hands off, seemingly unbothered by the sweat slicking Stiles’ skin. “You should probably pick a flavor instead of lecturing me.”Or, 3,600 words about Stiles and Derek getting ice cream on a hot day.





	melt

Looking back, it’s really not all that surprising that they’ve ended up here. In some ways, nothing’s really changed. His dad still thinks he can get away with sneaking burgers in the middle of his overnight shifts, the supernatural continue to find themselves drawn in by an old tree stump somewhere in the middle of the woods, and the Jeep still breaks down at least twice a month while Stiles single-handedly boosts duct tape sales because there’s just too much sentimental value in the car for him to let it go, at least not yet.

Some things are different, though. Different, but not necessarily new, at least not anymore. Derek’s hand on his thigh is one of those things, warm and solid as he absently drags the side of his thumb along the outer seam of Stiles’ khakis while Stiles draws lazy, shapeless patterns over the back of his wrist with his fingertip, his other hand hanging out of the passenger window and surfing on the wind as he chatters away. There’s a ring on his finger, now, narrow and silver and it’s been there long enough that the skin underneath is smooth, and paler than the rest of him.

“I can’t _believe_ you called a tow truck,” Stiles huffs, gently pinching the skin over Derek’s wrist as he lolls his head to the side to look at him, his mouth set in a sharp line and his jaw tight. It’s warm out, and he shed his flannel hours ago, probably, after spending some time under the hood of the Jeep. His arms are a little pink, and there’s a dark smear of engine grease at the base of his throat, half-hidden by the collar of his t-shirt. He smells like sweat and motor oil and off-brand Dr. Pepper from the vending machine at the garage, and he smells like fondness, too, despite the furrow of his brow and the set of his jaw. He’s not mad, but Derek humors him anyway and sighs heavily through his nose.

“What part of ‘ _hey, Derek, I’ve totally got this under control, I just need you to bring me some more tape_ ’ sounded like ‘ _please call someone to come and haul my—’_ ,” Stiles slaps his hand down over the back of Derek’s where it’s spread across his thigh and sits up in his seat, twisting to lean over the middle console and slightly into Derek’s space, dipping his head and craning his neck to look at something. He’s straining against his seat belt. “Derek, stop.”

Derek’s mouth pinches. He lifts his chin slightly to avoid a collision with the top of Stiles’ head, tapping the brakes a little. His fingers flex around Stiles’ thigh. “What.”

“Has that always–? Dude, did you not see that?”

“I’m driving.”

“Okay, is that supposed to mean anything, because you still have _eyes_. How did you not—,”

“I’m looking at the road, Stiles, not at, at—,” he lifts his thumb off of Stiles’ leg in a useless gesture.

“Ice cream,” Stiles says, sliding back to his side of the car.

“Not at… what.” Derek taps the brakes a little more, takes his eyes off of the road for a second to look at Stiles. He furrows his brow, blinks at him like he’s said something crazy. Stiles is used to it. He is unfazed, and he ignores him, and he twists in his seat to look over his headrest out the back window. Derek taps two of his fingers against Stiles’ thigh to draw his attention and reel him back in. “Stiles.”

Stiles only glances at him briefly, and then he laughs, a little breathless. “Dude, turn around, we have to go. The building’s in the shape of an _ice cream cone_. There’s a _cherry on top_ , did you _see_ —? Come _on._ ”

Derek says nothing. Stiles also says nothing, which any other time would be concerning, but right now it just means he’s staring at the side of Derek’s face with his lips pressed together and his brows raised as if to say, _huh, big guy? whadya say?_ Derek doesn’t have to look at him to know this. He can practically feel it, that intense stare burning into his cheek.

Derek doesn’t _have_ to look at him, but he looks at him anyway, casually glancing up into the rearview mirror as he turns his head. His hand slides down the left side of the wheel, pinky and ring finger extended. Stiles’ gaze shifts to follow his hand for a second, and then it flickers back to Derek, who has already looked away from him again.

The car is near-silent. Stiles sucks in a deep breath through his nose like the anticipation is killing him. Derek tilts his head a little to the left, shifts his eyes sideways, then back.

He taps the turn signal.

“ _Yes!_ ” Stiles crows, throwing a fist up in victory, but his judgement is a little poor and his excitement is too great and he accidentally punches the ceiling. Two of his knuckles pop. He shakes out his hand, squints an eye shut, winces. “Ow, shit.”

Derek takes his hand off Stiles’ thigh and flicks the side of his neck, huffing a quiet laugh under his breath.

“ _Ow, shit_ ,” Stiles repeats, shoving hard at Derek’s shoulder.

“Stiles, I’m _driving_ ,” Derek argues sharply, but the slight lift at the corner of his mouth betrays him and Stiles just makes a shitty face at him and slouches down into his seat a little as they wait for the light to change.

“... What if it’s not an actual ice cream place?”

Derek reaches for the controls on the dash, turning the A/C down a notch now that Stiles isn’t quite so sweaty and gross. “What,” he says flatly, and then, “what else would it be?”

Stiles shrugs his shoulders up to his ears, sits up a little, rests his elbow on the middle console so he can prop his chin between his thumb and forefinger. He tilts his head so he can look at Derek, then drops his hand so he can tap his fingers against Derek’s leg. It’s annoying. Derek grabs his hand and pushes his fingers into his palm and spreads them until they fall into the spaces between Stiles’, and then moves both of their hands back to Stiles’ thigh.

Stiles hums. “I dunno. I mean, it’s probably, they probably— it’s weird? Like the building is an ice cream cone, and that’s freaking great, but it’s weird that they sell ice cream cones out of an even bigger ice cream cone. I mean, it’s like the building is giving birth—,”

“Stiles.”

“—like here, take my children, enjoy—”

“ _Stiles._ ”

Stiles pauses, his mouth still open slightly. He closes it, wets his lips. “Yes.”

“Do you want to go or not?” The light turns green, Derek takes his foot off the brake. Stiles looks at him as if he’s an idiot, another thing Derek does not have to actually see to confirm.

“ _What?_ Yes. Obviously.” The car behind them honks, impatient, and Stiles twists around in his seat to look out of the back window again, his tone a little sharp. “ _Hey_.”

Smoothing his thumb against the side of Stiles’ hand, Derek swings the car around and shifts over into the far lane, swinging into the parking lot and easing into a spot at the very back of the lot, away from the other cars. Stiles doesn’t complain, shaking his hand free of Derek’s and practically falling out of the car before Derek can even cut the engine. He circles around the front of the car to meet up with Derek at his door, absently knocking his fist against the front grill on the way.

He smells happy. Derek is pleased, and as he pushes his door closed, he reaches out with his other hand, letting it settle in the dip where Stiles’ neck swoops into his shoulder. He guides him away from the car, swiping the pad of his thumb through the smear of motor oil on his throat, and then gives him a gentle shove, sending him stumbling forward a few steps.

“Go. You’re not eating it in the car.”

Stiles turns sharply on the ball of his foot, oddly graceful in the way he continues walking, only backwards this time. Derek locks the car and absently tugs his sunglasses free from the collar of his own shirt, raising his brows at Stiles’ protest as he follows after him.

“What? It’s like, _eight hundred_ degrees outside, Derek. Come _on_.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. Derek slides his sunglasses onto his face at an unusually slow pace. Stiles kind of wants to strangle him for too many reasons. He also wants to kiss him, but he would have to backtrack a couple steps to do that and there is ice cream on the line here, so he settles for flaring his nostrils, ignoring the sheen of sweat that’s already starting to form at the nape of his neck.

“Exactly,” Derek says. “So it’ll melt, and you’ll get it everywhere if you eat it in the car.”

“But there’s _air conditioning_ in the car.”

“Well, yeah. Because _my_ car isn’t held together with duct tape.”

“Okay, you know what.”

Stiles stops, finally, huffing in a breath through his nose. Derek, however, does not stop, and lightly shoulder-checks Stiles as he passes, brows lifting above the frame of his sunglasses. It’s almost affectionate, how gentle it is. “What?”

Stiles wrinkles his nose up and makes a soft, frustrated sound in the back of his throat because Derek is being cute and Derek probably doesn’t even realize. Or maybe he does, and maybe that’s why it frustrates Stiles.

He blinks. Turns around, jogs a couple steps to catch up to his husband. “Hold on. You said ‘you’, as in ‘me’, as in singular person-that-is-not-you getting ice cream.”

“I know,” Derek says blandly, “I was there when I said it.”

“Are you _really_ not going to get something from the, from the,” he gestures widely with one hand, indicating the giant, ice-cream shaped building. He doesn’t even know what this place is called. “From the ice cream mansion?”

Stiles hops the curb up onto the sidewalk and steps into the line leading up the small window. He turns around, putting his back to the building so he can look at Derek, waiting for his answer. Derek steps in front of him, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his chin down slightly so he can look at Stiles over the edge of his sunglasses.

“Have you ever _seen_ a mansion?”

“Yes.”

“In real life.”

Stiles crosses his arms and lifts his chin up, floundering silently for a second. “... _No_ ,” he huffs, dropping his arms. “But that’s not— we’re talking about your lack of ambition to have _fun_ . An ice cream place pops up, like, _over night_ —”

“We just don’t drive down this way that often—,”

“—and you’re trying to tell me you don’t want ice cream _from an ice cream?_ ”

Derek rolls his eyes and reaches out with one hand, pressing his fingertips to Stiles’ abdomen and pushing gently so Stiles takes a step back, filling the gap behind him as the rest of the line moves forward. He pinches at the front of his shirt to stop him from running into the person behind him, then lets his hand fall away.

“Yes, Stiles, that is what I’m telling you.”

Stiles looks thoughtful for a moment. “Okay,” he says, at last, sliding his hands into his pockets. He smiles a little, sways in towards Derek like he’s about to tell him a secret. “You can just have a bite of mine, if you change your mind. _One_ bite. That’s it. I won’t let you suffer because you make dumb choices sometimes, but I won’t reward you, either.”

Derek laughs under his breath. He reaches out with both hands, takes Stiles by the shoulders, and turns him around to face the menu posted on the side of the building so he won’t be left scrambling to make a decision once they finally make it up to the window to order. He drags his thumbs from the base of Stiles’ skull, all the way down his neck to the middle of his shoulders, and then lifts his hands off, seemingly unbothered by the sweat slicking Stiles’ skin. “You should probably pick a flavor instead of lecturing me.”

Stiles is quiet for a few very long seconds, and then he says, “Derek,” and then, “dude,” and, then, as he reaches back blindly, hand flailing a little until he makes contact with Derek’s elbow, he says “There are way too many choices. Do you see how many - _things_? How does anyone even decide?”

Derek nudges Stiles’ lower back to get him to move forward another step as the line progresses. “You’ve got about two minutes to make up your mind.”

“That’s— it’s going to take me two minutes just to read the entire menu,” Stiles hisses.

“You don’t need to read the entire menu. Start from the top, and when you see something you think you might want, stop reading.”

Stiles laughs. “It’s like you don’t even know me at all.”

“Or,” Derek counters, his voice low. “I know you better than almost anyone, and I know if you read the entire menu, we’ll be here for an hour before you pick something.”

Stiles opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it with a quiet click. Derek… isn’t exactly wrong. It’s not that Stiles is indecisive, because he can make decisions when it’s important, when it matters, when he’s on a time constraint, but this is none of the above, and Stiles just wants… all of it, probably. Every flavor, every topping, stomach ache be damned. So maybe it is that he’s a little bit indecisive. He hums, tilts his head a little like he’s conceding the point. “Fair,” he says, and then after a beat, “Okay.”

And then he turns around, and Derek just stares at him for a moment. His brows lift when Stiles doesn’t say anything. “Did you turn around so—,”

“So I’m not tempted to read the rest of it, yes.”

Derek actually laughs, then, quiet but bright. Stiles slaps the back of his hand against Derek’s shoulder, but he grins, too.

“Shut up.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah? And you still put a ring on it, so what does that say about _you_?” Stiles squints and lifts one of his hands, holding it over his brows to shade his eyes, his lips pressed together into a thin line.

Derek takes his sunglasses off and offers them wordlessly. Stiles takes them with a fleeting, barely-there smile. “That my past traumas have left me incapable of making rational decisions.”

“I hate you.”

Derek laughs again and spins Stiles back around by his hips, shoving him forward toward the window. “Sure you do. Order your ice cream,” he says, and then steps to the side out of line to wait, absently checking his phone to make sure the garage hasn’t called about Stiles’ Jeep. There are no notifications for any missed calls, but there is a text from Isaac, and a reminder from some kind of anxiety-slash-mood-tracking app Stiles installed on his phone literal years ago, because he said it kind of helped and maybe Derek should give it a try, too. _How are you feeling?_ , it asks, and Derek stares at it for a couple seconds. Half of the time he ignores it and swipes it away, but this time he looks up at Stiles, still stood at the window and leaning in a little like he’s trying to catch the cool breeze of air conditioning blowing from the inside.

Derek looks back down, taps the notification with his thumb to open up the app, and then taps in a few key words. _Happy_ is what he types first, followed by _content_ , followed by _settled_. He saves it, then closes the app, and by the time he looks up, Stiles is standing in front of him with a cake cone in his hand, licking a thick stripe around the base of what looks to be a twist of strawberry and vanilla soft-serve. Stiles closes his eyes, tilts his head back a little like he’s silently thanking God for the… Ice Cream Mansion, or whatever it’s called.

“Uhmuhgod.”

“Good?”

“Mm.”

“C’mon.” Derek tilts his head a little, indicating a direction, and then starts to move back toward the parking lot. Stiles follows without question, so captivated by his sweet treat that he nearly trips down off the curb. It takes him a few seconds to realize that they’re going back to the car already. He grins, absently licking the corner of his mouth, a little bounce in his step.

“ _Yes_ , I knew you’d have mercy—,”

“You’re not eating it in the car. I already said.”

“ _Damn it_ , Derek. This is— it’s melting faster than I can eat it, dude. The A/C would at least slow it down.”

Derek turns once he reaches the car, leaning against the driver side passenger door, arms over his chest and his shoes pressed flat against the tarmac, feet slightly parted. “You know that’s not how that works, right?”

“Can you just,” Stiles huffs, coming to stand in front of Derek, his ice cream melting in pale streaks over his knuckles and down the inside of his wrist, but he doesn’t seem to know what he wants Derek to _just_. Derek reaches out silently and carefully takes the cone out of Stiles’ hand, somehow managing not to get anything on him like some kind of ice-cream-in-an-inferno expert.

Or some kind of secret porn star, maybe, Stiles thinks, because Derek just licks around the base of the cone and cleans everything up for him like it’s nothing. Stiles decides he can’t watch, because it’ll make his dick hard and if Derek is concerned about ice cream in the car, then they _definitely_ aren’t gonna fuck in it, even though they’ve fucked in the Jeep about a thousand times now and it’s _fine_.

Instead, he looks at his messy hand and his lack of a napkin and considers walking back across the parking lot to get one, but that’s too far and it’s too hot, so he just licks a stripe up the inside of his wrist and across his knuckles and calls it a job sort-of-well-done. When he looks up again, Derek is holding the ice cream cone off to the side, and he’s watching him, kind of similar to the way a predator would watch its prey, only Stiles doesn’t feel threatened.

“Come on, man,” he says, kind of whiny, “I’m _really_ trying not to pop a boner right now and you’re making it _really_ hard.”

Derek snorts quietly and clears his throat, adjusting his footing a little.

“Oh, shut up, that was - unintentional.”

“Uh huh.” He holds the cone out toward Stiles. There is significantly less ice cream. Mostly, it’s just whatever’s actually left inside of the cone. “Do you want this back, or?”

“Duh, yes, the cone is like, the best part.”

“So just order a cone next time.”

“Give me that.” Stiles huffs and steps into Derek’s space, fumbling his ice cream out of his hand. Derek lets the same hand drop to Stiles’ hip now that he’s close enough and squeezes, tugging gently so that Stiles falls in a little closer. He’s not usually one for a whole lot of PDA, but sometimes he makes exceptions, and they’re partially blocked by the car, anyway, so he pulls Stiles in by the hem of his shirt and presses a light kiss to his throat, murmuring quietly into his warm skin.

“Hurry up and finish that already so I can fuck you in the car.”

Stiles crams the rest of the cone into his mouth so fast he nearly chokes, his cheek bulging and his eyes wide and bright and beautiful. Derek hums pleasantly, the corner of his mouth curling with a tiny smile, and when Stiles grabs at the front of his shirt to drag him out of the way so he can wrench open the back door, Derek lets him.

Stiles stands aside and makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, chewing quickly, his neck a little flushed . “C’mon, less’go. A/C on, pants off, dick—,”

“Please shut up.”

“—out.”

Derek sighs, but he ducks his head and climbs in, twisting around to stretch out across the back seat, his back propped against the opposite door, his knees parted so one foot rests up on the leather, and the other sits against the floor mat. Stiles climbs in after him, a mess of limbs, and manages to get the door shut and locked behind him, hovering over Derek with one hand braced on the center console up front, and the other on the back of the back seat.

“Hey,” he says, and he sounds a little stupid, a little excited because they’ve never fucked in Derek’s car before. For no real reason, either - it’s just never happened, which is stupid, because Stiles has only been back here for all of fifteen seconds and it’s already _way_ more comfortable than the Jeep has ever been. “Your pants are still on. And the A/C is not.”

Stiles smells like sweat and motor oil and vanilla and a little bit like fresh-cut grass, and dirt after it rains. Derek grabs at the front of Stiles’ t-shirt again and leans up to press his face into the side of Stiles’ neck, breathing in slow and deep.

Stiles kind of melts into him after that, and forgets all about the air conditioning.

**Author's Note:**

> the ice cream mansion is a real place only it's actually called twistee treat and i throw my money at them constantly because they have the best soft-serve i've ever had in my life. and yes, the buildings are really shaped like [ice cream cones](https://twisteetreat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Twistee_Treat_Port_Richey_Construction-1024x768.jpg).


End file.
